I discovered something different in World of Warcraft last week. I discovered Battlegrounds. You know, turns out that you can actually fight other people in this massively multiplayer game I’ve been playing? Ok. That was sarcasm. I did know you could fight people. I just wasn’t really focused on it.
There are two types of servers in WoW - PvP (player vs player) and PvE (don’t even ask, all I know is it’s the NON-PvP type). On my PvE server, if I see an enemy player, they cannot attack me and vice versus unless we both flag ourselves as being in PvP mode. Which is nice for when I’m running around killing undead monsters or what-have-you and I don’t want to worry about being slaughtered by some high level player just because they can. But. Fighting against other players is fun. If you mean to do it.
Enter the Battlegrounds (BGs). They’re these areas of the world where you specifically go to fight other players. Of the three BGs, each has different goals. Capture the flag or secure and hold locations. I’ve only played in Arathi Basin - the hold locations BG. And it’s awesome. Each side has 15 players and there are five locations to hold. The pace is fast, the battle only lasts about 30 minutes, and there’s strategy involved. It’s great. I think I’d be perfectly happy to take a holiday from the rest of WoW and just keep running through the BG. It’s a completely different game, in a lot of ways. I felt the excitement of playing a first person shooter (with none of the panic since FPSs requires twitch reflexes which I lack). But. Of course, there’s a but.
There needs to be fifteen people on each side to start it up. You go talk to a NPC at one of several locations in the world to enter a queue. Then, you can go about your business, playing WoW, doing quests, travelling, fighting, dying, etc. As soon as you’re at the front of the queue, you get a dialog that let’s you teleport directly to the BG if you want. It’s a smart mechanic, since you don’t have to just stand around waiting for the battle. But it’s a workaround to the bigger problem.
The first time I decided to try a BG I waited in the queue for about 25 minutes. Really no big deal. And once I got to the front, I managed to play 4 battles in a row without waiting at all. But then I tried again a few days later. I waited over four hours to get in. Again, when I finally did, I managed 3 back-to-back battles without wait.
The question is, why is the wait so long? And why does the wait go away once you get to the front? Is it just that there really aren’t 15 players on the other side that want to play? (Or that the sides are so unbalanced that the Alliance has a huge queue and the Horde as none?) I just don’t get it. If every time I played, I had to wait four hours - well, I just wouldn’t do it at all. But it would make sense - you play, then you re-enter the queue and have to wait again. But there hasn’t been another wait. I have trouble believing that every time I get to the front of the queue, all the other Alliance have left - or that all the Horde are suddenly queued up. It’s weird. If anyone has any idea what’s going on, I’d love to hear it!
To keep things more fair, the Battlegrounds are run in 10 level band, 20-29, 30-39, etc. That way, you don’t have level 60s decimating the poor level 20s. I was doing great, running through Arathi when I was at levels 37-39. Well. I hit 40 today, and I see it as a mixed blessing, since I’m at the bottom of the level range now. Uh oh, here comes me getting slaughtered. Better level up a bunch before I try again next weekend! Easier said then done, isn’t it.
7 Responses to “Warcraft Battlegrounds - The Good and The Bad”
A few things for ya…
1. Alliance genrally outnumber horde… hence the longer wait times for most Alliance members to get into BGs. There just isn’t enough Horde.
Blizzard has proposed fixes for this… such as pulling players from several servers to share in battlegrounds. That means you could be fighting 10 servers worth of people.
2. You are not level 60… there is not a large # of people that play in the BGs at the lower levels. Outside of prime time you probably will never get into a BG without being level 60. Even at 60 on my server, Azgalor US PvP, if it isn’t prime time there is no battlegrounds open.
Chances are what happend is this… there was not enough people in line to start a BG when you first signed up. After your 20 minute and 4 hour waits there finally was 10+ on each side to start the BG. Then the same people kept resigning up to play each and every time…. hence no wait for the following matches. The biggest challenge is getting enough people to start the battleground.
Just imagine the 40 vs 40 BG, Alterac Valley. Since Arathi Basin I have yet to see a new one open.
Wait, people aren’t even playing the Battlegrounds? Oh, that didn’t even occur to me. They’re so much fun! Everyone should try it. Preferable Sunday afternoons at about 4 on the Llane server. Heh. So I’ll have people to play with! Thanks for the great explanation.
Well 4 pm on a Sunday it should be in full swing.
7-9 AM any day of the week that I get to play… you are out of luck.
And after 100 BG matches they aren’t even fun anymore. They just turn into a grind.
To maintain even the lowest PvP ranks you will need to dedicate 3-4 hours a day to the battlegrounds… and if you aren’t in good groups you won’t be getting any PvP ranks at all.
Hmm, must depend on your level (and your server?). I got to be a Private after playing about 5 Arathi Battles (and we didn’t win a single one!). I’d say that’s about 4-5 hours of play total. I’m guessing that once you hit level 60, people do BG a lot more. Not much else to do?
7-9 in the morning? Wow. I’m more of a night owl myself!
Hehe…. work mandates, but my shift changes this week finally and I will be a mid afternoon early evening gamer
[...] I keep reading people complaining about the problem with World of Warcraft Battlegrounds (click here to see a post on Heartless Gamer about how to fix the problems, which sort of explains them too). They’re complaining about “Honor Farmers” and unstoppable teams of people that have perfected their tactics and cannot be beaten. For a basic description on what the battlegrounds are, try my previous post. Well maybe my server is different, but I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with the Battlegrounds. My first foray was into Arathi Basin with a high level 30s Night Elf Hunter. I played three times in a row with essentially the same pickup group of people. We lost every time but had a blast doing it, and every time we made some headway and it got close, we all were excited and talking and just looking forward to some success. [...]
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